1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cartridge type cosmetic bar container comprising a cartridge holding a cosmetic bar such as a lipstick and a cylindrical housing adapted to exchangeably accommodate said cartridge and rotatable to pay out said cosmetic bar.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
The container for a bar-shaped cosmetic product such as a lipstick generally comprises a bottomed cylinder and a shiftable cylinder movably disposed therein, with a lipstick or the like being held in said shiftable cylinder so that it can be shifted out and in through a top opening of said bottomed cylinder. Since this container and the lipstick are supplied as a unit, the container must be discarded after consumption of the lipstick. Moreover, it is impossible to exchange lipsticks only, with the container being unchanged. Therefore, there has recently been developed a cartridged cosmetic bar product comprising a structurally simple, inexpensive cartridge holding a cosmetic bar and a capped rotatable cylinder case which accepts said cartridge as separable units. With this container, upon consumption of the lipstick, the cartridge is taken out from the rotatable cylinder and discarded and a new cartridge is installed therein instead, thus permitting reuse of the rotatable cylinder case. Since the cartridge is simple in construction and inexpensive, this cosmetic bar product is less costly than the earlier product. Furthermore, this cartridged cosmetic bar product has the advantage that by providing a plurality of cartridges holding different kinds of lipsticks, the desired lipstick can be selectively used by changing the cartridge only.
A typical example of the above cartridge type cosmetic bar container is disclosed in Japanese laidopen Utility Model Application No. 63-64312/1988. As illustrated in FIG. 10, this container comprises a cartridge 51 and a rotatable cylinder 53 having a cap 52, which is adapted to removably accommodate said cartridge 51 therein. The cartridge 51 mentioned just above comprises an inner cylinder 56 having a peripheral wall 54 provided with an axially extending elongated slot 55, an outer cylinder 58 having a spiral groove 57 on its inner circumferential wall and rotatably sleeved over the outer periphery of said inner cylinder 56, and a payout cylinder 60 rotatably accommodated in said inner cylinder 56 with a projection 59 on its outer peripheral surface being engaged with said spiral groove 57 of outer cylinder 58 through said elongated slot 55 of inner cylinder 56. The peripheral groove 61 of inner cylinder 56 and the peripheral ridge 62 of outer cylinder serve to rotatably install the inner cylinder 56 within the outer cylinder 58. The rotatable cylinder 53 having the cap 52 is a bottomed cylinder and adapted to removably accommodate said cartridge 51. This cartridge type cosmetic bar container discharges its function as follows. As the above-mentioned rotatable cylinder 53 is rotated, the torque drives the inner cylinder 56 to turn, whereupon the payout cylinder 60 ascends or descends along the elongated slot 55. In this container, the driving torque of the rotatable cylinder 53 is transmitted to the inner cylinder 56 by the following mechanism. Thus, the outer peripheral surface of the lower part of said inner cylinder 56 is provided with a plurality of longitudinal grooves 63 at circumferentially spaced intervals and an engaging groove 64 below said longitudinal grooves 63 and as shown in FIG. 12, a built-in cylinder 67 having resilient engaging projections 65 and ridges 66 engaging said longitudinal grooves 63 is disposed in said rotatable cylinder 53. Indicated at 68 is a cutout. The lower part of said inner cylinder 56 is fitted into said built-in cylinder 67, with said engaging grooves 64 being engaged with said resilient projections 65, and as illustrated in FIG. 11, a given one of said plurality of longitudinal grooves 63 being engaged with an engaging ridge 66 so as to transmit the torque of the rotatable cylinder 53 to the inner cylinder 56 via said engaging ridges 66 and longitudinal grooves 63. The engaging grooves 64 and resilient ridges 65 serve to preclude dislodging of the rotatable cylinder 53 from the inner cylinder 56.
However, the above torque transmission mechanism has the follow ing disadvantages. Thus, in inserting the lower part of said inner cylinder 56 into the built-in cylinder 67 of the rotatable cylinder 53, the four ridges 66 disposed circumferentially at 1/4 pitches on the outer periphery of the built-in cylinder 67 must be exactly engaged with the plurality of longitudinal grooves 63 disposed on the outer periphery of the inner cylinder 56 at its lower part. However, it is difficult to confirm the above engagerent and there may be a case in which the engaging ridge 66 rides on the area between the corresponding longitudinal groove 63 and adjoining longitudinal groove 63 and if the container is used in this condition for a long time, the height of the engaging ridge 66 is decreased by fatigue. In that event, when a fresh cartridge 51 is set upon consumption of the initial cartridge, with its longitudinal grooves 63 being brought into engagement with the ridges 66 of the built-in cylinder 67, the decreased height of the ridge 66 results in the formation of a gap between that ridge 66 and the longitudinal groove 63 due to failure of contact. If the rotatable cylinder 53 is turned in this condition, the engaging ridge 66 may ride over the longitudinal groove 63 onto the area between two adjacent longitudinal grooves 63,63. Even in this condition, the torque of the rotatable cylinder 53 will be transmitted to the inner cylinder 56. However, if this condition persists, the height of the engaging ridge 66 is further decreased and, as a result, the ridge 66 even fails to contact the area between longitudinal grooves 63,63 so that the torque of the rotatable cylinder 53 is no longer transmitted to the inner cylinder 56. As a consequence, the reuse of the rotatable cylinder 53 is made impossible, thus shortening the useful life of the container.
To alleviate this disadvantage, it has been proposed to reduce the rotational friction between the outer cylinder 58 and inner cylinder 56 so that the inner cylinder 56 may be turned even if the torque transmitted from the rotatable cylinder 56 is small. However, since the rotational force to be applied to the rotatable cylinder 53 need not be large in such construction, even a slight force causes the inner cylinder 56 to turn and, hence, the lipstick to ascend or descend too easily. If the inner cylinder 56 is turned even by such a very slight force, no adequate resistance is felt by the user so that the manipulability of the container is rather adversely affected. Furthermore, the above construction has a further disadvantage in that if the cosmetic bar, e.g. a lipstick, is paid out to a given length of exposure and applied forcefully against the lip or the like, the force applied causes the inner cylinder 56 to turn in the reverse direction and, hence, the lipstick to descend back. A still further disadvantage of the above construction is that it is complicated in structure and, therefore, its manufacture takes much time and labor.